Poetry Was Mallarme's World, Religion

"A Throw of the Dice: The Life of Stephane Mallarme" by Gordon Millan Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $35

Very simply put, a poet is born, a poet dies. And in between, a poet lives and writes.

Gordon Millan, a professor of French studies at Scotland's University of Strathclyde, follows this direct approach in this new biography - the first in half a century - of Stephane Mallarme. It's a nice change of pace from the theory-laden, jargon-riddled constructs of some literary legends.

Millan hardly mentions Symbolism, the French literary movement in which Mallarme featured prominently. Millan simply presents the poet's work and life together, and the biography distinguishes itself by closely following Mallarme's relationships with his family and contemporary artists, and by noting the power struggle that religion, teaching, and writing waged in his life.

Born in 1842, Mallarme was an awkward problem child. His mother died when he was young, and his father quickly remarried and started a new family. Mallarme and his sister were raised by their conscientious grandmother. He never excelled in schoolwork, and only when he discovered poetry did he begin, in effect, to get a life. Poetry became Mallarme's world.

He read voraciously and copied "over 8,000 lines of verse by poets whose works he did not himself possess" - one of his favorites being Edgar Allan Poe. His great ambition was to write a big new work like Wagner's Ring cycle, and he shocked his devoted grandmother by abandoning his Catholic faith and accepting poetry as his new religion.

Mallarme's heart was also taken by a young, uneducated German woman, Marie Gerhart, whom he married. Their early years were spent in small towns where Mallarme taught English to French students and wrote poetry in his spare time. They later moved to Paris where he met Manet and wrote passionately in defense of Impressionism.

Mallarme never was a good teacher, though his head was filled with poetry and linguistics. Teaching was a terrible chore for him, and he was constantly being rescued by his family's influence within the Ministry of Education. He managed to hang on for 30 years, though, and retire in 1893, when he counted on "really making a start as a writer." Before he died five years later at 56, he created the new work for which he's justly famous: "Un Coup de des" ("A Throw of the Dice").

This visual poem uses typography like paint, brushing words on the page and highlighting his theme, "A throw of the dice will never eliminate chance." He also crafted "Divagations," in which review articles were written like prose poems.

When Paul Verlaine died in 1896, Parisians elected Mallarme "prince of poets," but he was dismayed at the publicity and sideshow atmosphere. He thought only poets could be true anarchists because they alone produce what society doesn't want - and in return society doesn't provide a poet "enough to live on."

Mallarme would approve of Millan's biography because it understands that for poets, poetry is a matter of life and death.

Seattle poet and artist Joseph F. Keppler's exhibit, "Fallen Culture Exposure//(City) (Museum) (Idea)," will open Dec. 15 at the Two Bells Tavern.